All suffering is self inflicted. We may believe that the cause of our suffering lies elsewhere -- in the world, in our circumstances,in other people, in our fates, and so on. But we are wrong. We are deceiving ourselves. Our suffering is self inflicted. It is thepurpose of this article, to argue why this is so. Clear recognition of this fact may perhaps, motivate us to hasten the sadhananecessary to stop afflicting ourselves.

We do not wish to inflict suffering upon ourselves but we all do, nonetheless. We bring on suffering by looking for happiness in he wrong places and in the wrong way. Indeed, we seek happiness for the wrong 'person'. The source of suffering is ignorance of one's true nature. The calamitous error we make -- one that is the root cause of all our troubles -- is that we takeourselves to be something we are not. We take ourselves to be the ego (our sense of self). We believe that our BEING is the ego. So firmly are we wedded to this notion that we go through life without ever questioning it. By happiness we invariablymean happiness of the ego; by sadness we mean sadness of the ego.

As long as we identify with the ego, and seek its happiness, we are doomed to disappointment. What the ego wants iswealth, fame, comfort, happiness, power, sexual gratification and the like. We imagine that we will be happy if we find these.It is a matter of common experience, however, that even if these are found the satisfaction they yield is short lived. The egosoon takes these for granted and grasps for more, Why is this? What is the deep rooted reason responsible for the ego never saying,, 'Enough'? And if ego is indeed the cause of suffering, why do we attach ourselves to it so strongly? Further, Advaitainsists that the ego is a fiction. Why then do we find it so difficult to jettison it and live a life free from suffering? There is a very fundamental cause that provides answers to all these questions. Although that cause, which is explained below, is scientific in nature, it is easily understood. For this, however, we have to understand the key role played by the ego inevolution.

The ego was evolved by Nature to enhance the material well being of individuals. Ego is a vehicle that greatly promotesthe physical survival of a body. A sense of self that identifies itself with a particular body keenly looks out for the body'sneeds and does whatever is needed for its survival. Those with a stronger sense of self, garner more resources for themselves precisely because they are more self centered. And greater the availability of resources to an individual fostershis physical survival. Furthermore, it also fosters the physical survival of his offspring. It is one thing to have many children,but to ensure their survival is quite another. The number of children who survive into adulthood depends on the resourcesavailable to their parents. In our evolutionary past (going back a million years or more), individuals with more resources hadmore surviving offspring.

Why is this capacity to have more surviving children in our ancient past relevant to our subject? Because that is what evolutioncrucially depends on. Children genetically inherit their parents' physical and psychological traits and, by surviving, will themselvespass these on to posterity. In the process of evolution, a trait like physical strength that increased an individual's ability toacquire material resources, then, was embodied in more people in subsequent generations than traits that were less successfulin this regard, (simply because people of the former type left behind more surviving children). People who possessed traits thathelped them acquire material resources lived longer and so had more children. At the same time, they also genetically transmittedthese very traits to their children.

It follows that the traits we observe in people today are precisely those that have proved themselves successful in the past in terms of the narrow yardstick of evolution, namely, the number of surviving offspring. After thousands of generations in our evolutionary march , only those traits that were most successful in appropriating resources (the 'fittest') remained in the population.It is in this way that successful traits got singled out by Nature and passed on to future generations. In short, in the struggle forsurvival, Nature 'selected' those traits that succeeded in reproducing themselves. (This process was referred to as 'natural selection'by Charles Darwin in his classic book, The Origin of Species, and is the principal mechanism through which evolution works.).

Evolution, then, forged and established the ego because it greatly facilitated physical survival and reproduction. Becauseit has such a long evolutionary history, ego is deeply ingrained in human nature. (Darwin himself did not propose the rolefor ego that is being suggested here, but that role is a hypothesis maintained in this article. The only sage who has writtenabout the evolutionary significance of ego, to my knowledge, is Sri Aurobindo - see especially his The Life Divine. In theChristian tradition, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is the only mystic who accorded evolution any role in spirituality, in particularlyin his posthumously published The Phenomenon of Man, Harper and Row, New York, 1959).

This is why it is so hard to cast off or circumvent. We believe it defines who we are, and this is the source of our tenaciousattachment to it.

The ego is trained to respond only to pleasure and pain. Pleasure was the carrot that Nature offered to attract the egoto situations that were beneficial to an individual's survival. Pain was the stick Nature wielded to drive it away from situationsthat were detrimental to survival.

Individuals who embraced pleasure and fled from pain did better in evolutionary terms, and so now we all tend to welcome pleasure and resist pain. Our firmly entrenched notions of 'good' and 'bad' derive from Nature's twin devices of pleasureand pain, and they serve to keep the ego in place. We pursue what we believe is good for us and shun what we believeis bad. 'More of everything good and less of everything bad' is the ego's motto. This is the modern evolutionary reasonthat explains the ancient insight of Hinduism and Buddhism that desires are the principal tentacles of ego, and, therefore,constitute the major impediments to liberation.

People all over the world are egoistic. Egoism is a condition that blights the lives of almost all humans. Yet, Advaita claimsthat the ego is an illusion. In what sense this is so? Ego is an illusion in the sense that it is not a permanent attribute of human nature. It is true that egoism is pervasive, tenacious, and universal. Advaita take the Truth as that which is eternal. Since ego is not eternal, it is an illusion. It was created by Nature as a vehicle to promote the physical survival of the body. If one manages to sidestep its workings even for a moment (as in the enlightenment experiences of the Self realized sages), one sees that the ego is an illusion. Ego is Nature's creature, manufactured for evolutionary purposes.But it is not the truth of our being. It is in this sense that ego is an illusion, as is its perception of the world. (Recent developmentsin neuroscience have demonstrated that the sense of the self is created by the brain. (See e.g. The Feelings of What Happens:Body and Emotion in the making of Consciousness by A. Damasio, Harcourt Brace and Co., New York, 1999.).

There are further consequences that arise from the sense of self. The pursuit of material well being pits one ego against other egos that are engaged in a similar manner. This results in conflicts, for resources that accrue to one individual frequently comeat the expense of others. Conflicts in turn lead to anger, hate, the proclivity for violence, the penchant for revenge, and otherunsavory emotions. These negative emotions arise in the long march of evolution because the actions that sprang from themenabled individuals to seize more resources for themselves -- resources that they could not have otherwise acquired in the strugglefor survival.

These negative traits are hardly conducive to happiness; indeed, they are now deemed to be 'sins'. So how could they arise? Nature's purpose in constructing the ego was not to make people happy or virtuous. What nature rewarded was the capacityto acquire resources and the reward of it conferred was better chances of survival for oneself and one's children. In other words,the reward Nature offered for garnering more resources was greater representation of an individual's traits (genes) in futuregenerations.

This is not to suggest that people consciously wanted to maximize the number of children they left behind. Most peopledo not think in this manner at all. The point is that those people who had 'successful' traits DID leave behind more peoplelike themselves -- whether they intended to or not. Nature did not rely on people's intention to bring this about. To the extent that anger, competitiveness, violence. and ego-strength facilitated an individual's survival (and that of his offspring),to that extent these negative traits got distributed more broadly in the human population and got more firmly entrenched inhuman nature. It is for this reason that such traits are almost universal in humans. They persisted because they served anevolutionary purpose.

We are now in a position to appreciate why the ego can never be permanently happy. The ego was designed by evolution to make comparisons. As we have seen, an individual with an abundance of resources will do well in evolutionary terms (asmeasure by the size of his progeny). But another individual slightly more resources will do even better. People who werepredisposed to constantly comparing themselves, with others, and improving their own lot accordingly, therefore, did betterin evolutionary terms. And so the psychological tendency to gauge one's well being by measuring oneself against others gotembedded in human nature (either genetically or through imitation by children). Nature has thus programmed humans to liveby making comparisons. It is not enough that we are rich. We want to be the richest. It is not enough that we are powerful.We want to be the most powerful. (articulating the deep desire in humans to excel in status and power, Caesar is said to haveremarked, 'I would first here in a village than second in Rome.' Plutarch's Life of Julius Caesar available on line at http//penelope.uchicgo.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Caesar*.html.) And even if we fortuitously happen to be the richest and mostpowerful, we constantly worry that we may not always remain so. This is why the ego can never be truly happy. Nothing is everenough because nothing it can grasp is entirely permanent.

Since the ego masquerades as our being, it is perpetually insecure. It is constantly in need of support to assure itself of itslegitimacy. Its pose as our being is a wholly fraudulent one, and so it is always in need of defence against this falsehood.Sri Bhagavan Ramana said, 'What is the ego, then? It is something intermediate between the inert body and the Self. It has no locus standi.' (Be As You Are, The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi, by David Godman.)

The ego is incessantly trying to acquire whatever it believes will strengthen its position --- more wealth, more power, more status. But no matter how great the wealth it amasses or how artful the defence it mounts, it cannot transform a lie into truth. The attempt is very costly, however, though we may not recognize this cost, because we are accustomed to it. In fact,our whole lives are taken up by this dubious activity of propping up this fraud. How much costly it can get?

For the ego, therefore, the lasting happiness is an unattainable goal. The attempt is doomed to failure from the start.

This brings us to the issue of suffering. Why is suffering self inflicted? Identification with the ego, is the cause of suffering.If a man's wealth were lost in robbery, he would be greatly upset and saddened because he subscribes to the belief, 'I havelost my wealth.' His sense of loss and grief comes from his voluntary identification with a psychological claim to the missingwealth. He would not react in this way, if it were a stranger's wealth, that was stolen. If his awareness were not tied sofirmly to a particular body-mind, his reaction to the loss would be greatly muted. Were he to approach Sri Ramana, the Sagewould surely have urged him to ask himself, 'Who is that has lost his wealth?'

We have seen why we are so attached to the ego and why, as long as this is so, suffering is inevitable. To recapitulate:promoting happiness is not why Nature created and programmed the ego for. The ego's reason for existence is somethingelse altogether -- to help procreate and to garner what ever resources it can to advance procreation. There are only two mastersthe ego reacts so: pleasure and pain. Nature has burdened us with an illusory sense of self because those among our forebearsin our evolutionary past who embraced this fiction left behind more offspring (who genetically inherited the same inclination).Ego is the earthly inheritance that Nature has bequeathed to humans. And it is this bequest that we have to disown throughintense sadhana (self inquiry), if we wish to perceive the Truth about ourselves.

The ego may be a fiction, but suffering cannot be easily dismissed. It is certainly very real to us. We feel it deeply. Nevertheless,it is true that is only our ego that suffers. What is attached to wealth, for example, will suffer, when wealth is lost. It follows that,from the standpoint of Truth, suffering is an "assumed burden" because we choose to identify with the ego in the first place.Suffering is a self inflicted wound. Because we have lost sight of the fact, that we make a choice, we attribute our suffering tosome other cause -- to other people, to our circumstances, etc., Our ego is a device, a concept that Nature has fabricated.But it is WE who have opted to embrace, love, cherish, and worship it as an idol. This is entirely OUR own doing. The conclusionis inescapable. SUFFERING IS SELF INFLICTED.

What about the pain the body feels when it is hurt? That, surely, is not self inflicted? True, physical pain is not necessarily one'sown doing. Nevertheless, the suffering that usually accompanies it, is. That is why, when a most painful osteo-sarcoma waseating away His body, Sri Ramana did not suffer. There has to an ego present that accepts suffering. When there is no ego, there may be pain but not suffering.

But behind all the machinations of the ego, there stands our true nature, our true Being, untainted by all the suffering the egocreates for itself. Once we recognize and acknowledge our true Self, our suffering vanishes. The world as IT IS PERCEIVED BY THE EGO, is then seen to be maya, an illusion. This is what the Sage assures us.

What is the solution to the problem of suffering, then ? Since evolution has shaped our behavior over a million years, whatchance do we have of escaping from its clutches? There IS an escape route. However, except in the cases of a fortunate few,it usually requires great effort. It consists in recognizing that our true nature is the same as God's. This is our heavenly inheritance.This is our birthright, the Being of our being. The scriptures and countless sages are unanimous in asserting this. We have forgotten our birthright and are wandering around like nomads in alien land, fighting and struggling for more of this or that, when,in truth, everything that exists is ours already. Our being permeates the entire universe and here we are trying to appropriatefragments of the world and claiming exclusive ownership of them. How absurd it seems when we think that we have renounced our divine birthright and are begging for scraps to feed a worthless fictitious idol !

The problem of suffering is to be solved, then, by shedding our false identity and retrieving knowledge of our true one.We have to escape from the mechanical rut that Nature has trapped us in. we have to surrender our tendency of grasping for more and more to offer more and more as tribute to our ego. We have to stop voluntarily identifying with the ego and recognize that the ego itself a pathetic creature of a mechanical deity, Nature We have to cease being enamored by Nature's earthly bequest to us if we are to retrieve our heavenly inheritance.

Different spiritual traditions prescribe different means to accomplish this. But if all our problems arise because of thefateful error that we take ourselves to be something we are not, then the most natural thing to do would be to questionour identity.

This is why the technique Sri Ramana recommended (self inquiry) is the most direct. By persistently asking oneself thequestion, Who am I? and rejecting every answer offered by the mind (which can only serve up more concepts), self inquirypromises to break our identification with the body-mind and reveal our true identity as the Self. Until we have first handexperience of this, we are doomed to keep heaping suffering upon ourselves.

concluded.

Dear right2be

Thank you for your appreciation of the article. I also find it refreshingly original.